evening, and he is coming over the brow
of the green dell, with his long shadow stretching down it. A very long
shadow it is for so small a figure to cast, for if we wait a minute or
two till Stephen draws nearer, we shall see that he is no strong, large
man, but a slight, thin, stooping boy, bending rather wearily under a
sack of coals, which he is carrying on his shoulders, and pausing now and
then to wipe his heated forehead with the sleeve of his collier's flannel
jacket. When he lifts up the latch of his home we will enter with him,
and see the inside of the hut at Fern's Hollow.

CHAPTER II.

THE DYING FATHER.

Stephen stepped over the threshold into a low, dark room, which was
filled with smoke, from a sudden gust of the wind as it swept over the
roof of the hut. On one side of the grate, which was made of some
half-hoops of iron fastened into the rock, there was a very aged man,
childish and blind with years, who was crouching towards the fire, and
talking and chuckling to himself. A girl, about a year older than
Stephen, sat in a rocking-chair, and swung to and fro as she knitted away
fast and diligently at a thick grey stocking. In the corner nearest to
the fireplace there stood a pallet-bed, hardly raised above the earthen
floor, to which Stephen hastened immediately, with an anxious look at the
thin, white face of his father lying upon the pillow. Beside the sick man
there lay a little child fast asleep, with her hand clasping one of her
father's fingers; and though James Fern was shaking and trembling with a
violent fit of coughing from the sudden gust of smoke, he took care not
to loose the hold of those tiny fingers.

'Poor little Nan!' he whispered to Stephen, as soon as he could speak.
'I've been thinking all day of her and thee, lad, till I'm nigh
heart-broken.'

'Do you feel worse, father?' asked Stephen anxiously.

'I'm drawing nearer the end,' answered James Fern,--'nearer the end every
hour; and I don't know for certain what the end will be. I'm repenting;
but I can't undo the mischief I've done; I must leave that behind me.
If I'd been anything like a decent father, I should have left you
comfortable, instead of poor beggars. And what is to become of my poor
lass here? See how fast she clips my hand, as if she was afeared I was
going to leave her! Oh, Stephen, my lad, what will you all do?'

'Father,' said Stephen, in a quiet and firm voice, 'I'm getting six
shillings a week wages,